Misguided Angel
by goldenmeadow
Summary: Sultry southern SLASH. Muggy, melting hot and swarthy. A vampire and a man. A blinding blond form; too big to fit in this world. A quiet, tall, assured man; too used to his own company. AU. Mature. Very short story.
1. Wooed

**Hey there. Just felt like doin' this :).**

**Cheers to Viola Cornuta, an amazing woman, a friend, a lovely (harsh) beta. 3 over and over and over, _all over._**

I wanted Slash. This was written for my M_en of Twilight _series. Enjoy. There is another chapter.

Song: _Misguided Angel, _Cowboy Junkies:

www. youtube. com/watch?v= zufpr8BwY9U

* * *

**DeBordieu, SC**

**Jasper**

This was supposed to be our vacation and I was nervy as a young foal! The only time I relaxed was when I was feeding, or when Edward was awake. His sleeping form taunted me from the large bedstead set across from me. The sun was rising, but my human lover was not.

Edward alone made me timid as an innocent boy in the first throes of love. My palms sweaty, _sort of_, with his proximity, my mouth dry, apart from the venom that swilled like saliva with the smallest gander of his brawny forearms and wide wrists. The twists and turns of his muscles made my hair, and my cock, stand on end. I liked to tweak the fine copper wires that made filigree of his chest just so I could hear Edward whimper in that deep, gravelly voice and curl his naked luscious big pink red and wet cock up to mine.

_Morningwood, HA! I had perma-wood! I never slept so the idea of morningwood was ludicrous, and I was hard as fuck most hours of the day and night._

This was ridiculous! I was a manly man, a hunter, a predator, a vampire! And yet my knees knocked when Edward looked up at me from beneath the cascading black feathers of his ridiculously long eyelashes. Taking all of me in with his deep forest eyes.

Singularly unaware, unaffected, or just fucking oblivious to the threat I encapsulated in the strength of my fingers, power that I barely needed to exert to kill instantly, and the raw slice of my teeth that could mezzaluna over skin like slicing through stalks of herbs, Edward had approached me.

Sexy, self-assured, handsome, so sensual with his come hither eyes and his loping gait that spoke of hours spent bedded and feverishly fucking, he had no compunction when he tried to snag the cab I was flagging down.

Insanely, for one inherently graceful, I fell off the curb, at first simply surprised, put-out and pissed off that any mere human would dare cross my path.

When his hand lashed out to pull me to the sidewalk before I could crush a car with my unyielding frame, I almost collapsed again.

Just though his touch.

And he felt it too.

Brokering peace, we shared that taxi. I couldn't stop staring at his hair that tossed about the crown of his head like it, itself, had just had the most savage sex!

Smiling so wide that his curvy red carved lips looked big enough to eat, he unabashedly took in my growing erection that was held tight in the crotch of my jeans and twined his fingers together as if to keep them from touching me.

The smoky air inside the cab turned muggy and heavy with immediate desire.

En route, my house was first, a Charleston Single in the French quarter of downtown Charleston.

He knew where I lived.

The persistent, beautiful, robust mortal man stalked me, staked me out. Introduced himself as Edward and again my gut plundered to my toes when we clasped hands over my own name.

With his rarified air, I could never have turned Edward down when he asked me out. Always the marauder, it was, in fact, nice to be pursued.

Within days of our first date we were bound. Quickly, inextricably! In under a week, Edward had fucked me blind.

Different, new, fresh and something I had never looked for in another man, woman, and not even in another vampire, the immediate feeling I had for Edward was overwhelming and all-reaching. I didn't want to be perfidious, but once again I was cowering and scared to tell him the truth.

He hardly even blinked when I admitted I was a vampire! Nodding his head succinctly, Edward eased his tapered fingers through mine across the table where he ate breakfast and I pushed my soppy disgusting sunny-side-up eggs around the plate. As if I had just told him I preferred my eggs over easy.

When the reality sank in, Edward asked questions. Born and bread in the south, he had a sassy southern drawl that made me want to eat the honey-dipped words that dripped from his mouth. It took Herculean effort to concentrate on his un-fucking-ending questions when all I wanted to do was get him back in bed, or topple him to the floor, or stand him up against the wall. Hours and days of queries while he put on his sexy specs and jotted notes as if there would be a test forthcoming.

Some were so preposterous it was cute and I couldn't stop myself from pitching forward to softly kiss his pursed thoughtful lips. Some were more serious and galling. Tendencies I didn't want to admit, inquiries I didn't want to answer.

What did I eat, had I ever killed, when had I died, when would I die, why didn't I age?

_Animals, yes, in the 1800's, never, because I was undead._

A nagging sadness ached inside of me. A yawning void that grew, little by little, at each passing year.

_Naked and fucking gloriously sinewed, Edward stretch and rolled in his sleep and the sheet tangled down beneath his hips, displaying the succulent cock that hardened beneath my flattering gaze and the wild cool wind that whipped the drapes in and out of the casement._

_The satiny cotton sheet slid farther down to his thighs - I may have helped it along a little bit, but who was I to deny his masterpiece shaft from its first breath of morning light?- catching in the swelling hold of his balls and nestling there just as my mouth wanted to. I was envious of a fucking scrap of cloth!_

That_ was the true meaning of morningwood. I licked my lips and wished I still had him on my tongue. But I'd taken a shower soon after he fell to slumber, washing the cake of sex and sand and seaspray from my body._

_Completely naked, almost complete, I had sat back in the plush recliner to watch over Edward's dreams and await his waking to a day that would finally never end._

_Each wistful mumble, sighing rumble, scissor of legs and tenuous sleepfull stretch caught in my throat. Made me think about every part of Edward over my shoulders, against my back, between my fists with his hands rough from work making a devious wander south over my chest and abdomen to my cock._

_I stood for a moment, ready to pounce._

_Then sat back down with my dick slapping against my thigh and then up to my stomach._

Once he had plied his cock, a slick wet teasing thing, all over my body, bidding me to keep still. From the sensitive shaking undersides of my arms, between my thighs, prodding my sac and slipping over my erection, plunging into my navel, against my throat, finally he laid his ponderous length against my lips but would not let me open my mouth.

I begged him with my eyes as he dribbled drops of cum into the corners of my mouth.

His breathing just as harsh as mine, he pulled away and rasped, "Lick your lips, Jasper."

Groans and growls spilled out of me as I sucked his treat down my throat and tried to yank him over my body so our naked bodies could collide.

But Edward sat between my legs, shook his head, and made me watch him as he took both our cocks in his two hands and rubbed venom to cum and cock to dick until thinking, focusing, looking, breathing became futile efforts.

I could have overpowered him in a heartbeat, but I would do whatever he fucking wanted, whenever he wanted!

He made me grovel before allowing me to widen his stance and pull him over, onto me.

Certainly I'd been with men, women, vampires alike, but this was different.

This was everlasting.

We'd lived together, as husbands, mates, helpmeets for three years.

And now Edward was twenty-six to century and a half.

Everything I had _been_ before him became a moot point.

And he never once asked for it, never complained; never even outright spoke of the fact that every tolling year took him further down the road of death while I remained static.

He was too proud for that.

I could think of nothing else.

I was getting myself all worked up because something enormous was beginning and something gigantic was ending and I no longer knew which way was up unless I was with Edward! In reality, I just wanted to work him over for the fourth time this day. Blast his damn human nature that made sleep the most irritating necessity.

_In our seaside cottage at exclusive DeBordieu, the formerly prosperous pre-Civil War coastal realm of South Carolina, Edward and I were taking a break from real life to idle in this borderland of God._

_It seemed fitting for what I had planned._

_My soul was strong, and Edward's spirit an undaunted thing._

_There were midafternoons on the dunes, wrestling like boys in the sand, splashing wildly in the surf, holding hands, walking the beach, toeing up seashells that had already been inspected and left for us late wanderers. Not a single whole sand-dollar remained._

_While he napped and rested from my insatiable passionate greed, I feasted off the plentiful game. Fey deer gamboled through the orange-red-grey wash of evening and saw me hidden in bracken and hardy vegetation sampling the musky blood of mammals._

_And still Edward slept on._

_I had ulterior motives for bringing him to this colony; my intention wasn't just to make sultry love to him from the dusk of one day to the dawn of the next._

_I groaned in frustration…perhaps, intentionally, a little too loudly and right close to Edward's ear, contemplating the manifold ways I could enclose that pink shell that turned bright red during orgasm in my mouth while my hand trembled over his exposed cock with piercing longing to enclose it._

_The frigid breeze of my breath fired goosebumps over Edward's upper arms as I inclined closer to him, willing him to wake. To need me as much as I desired him._

_Sloping to his side, facing me, slowly blinking open his sleepy soft viridian eyes, the pout of dusty siesta made his lips fuller over the hushed nettle of his voice, "What's the meaning of this?" Pulling up on his elbow that dented the goosedown mattress, Edward scrubbed his face with his hand, rasped the dark auburn stubble that stippled his high cheeks, square jaw, and strong neck in a pointillist pattern that felt like ten thousand tiny pinpricks on my skin when he rubbed his beard's growth over me._

_Then he smirked as awareness settled in, like the sheet caught up in the nest of his groomed pubic hair, falling to hide all but the lovely ripe tip of his cock._

_I wanted to fuck the smirk right off of his face!_

_Eros exploded my heart._

_Eroticism combusted my body._

_Shaking off my novitiate's feelings, I plucked Edward's mouth with my lips. Nibbled and wet his delectable flesh. Sifted my hands over the breadth of his chest, the depth of his tummy, reaching behind to grab his ass, hard._

_With a blast of laughter detonating his being, Edward toppled back and pulled me over him, and I wrestled that motherfucker of a cockblocking sheet to the end of the bed!_

_Silencing his amusement, I kissed him passionately, working over, into, under every crafty slippery surface, and took my lips lower to nip at his chin and rake my tongue over the bright bristles that tried to make acupuncture through my tastebuds, futilely. _

_By the time I was done kissing him, Edward's jaw was thoroughly chafed, his lips chapped. Vividly crimson, raw, ruddy, ready._

_Circling above me, Edward plastered that greedy mouth to my pecs as his reedy eyes took all of me in, mumbling, "Hominy…"_

_Frowning through the intense swamp of heat his licking made of my skin as it moved from nipple to nipple, touching and tasting each of my ribs on both sides of my torso, and deep down into the cut of sinew that were cliffs just inside my hipbones, I questioned, "Hominy?"_

_Nuzzling all around the base of my shaft and nothing more so my head cracked back into the mountain of pillows, pushing out white feathers through seams, Edward muttered, "Yeah, hominy, honey. Boiling, boiled, kernels, puffed, perfect posole…your nipples. I could eat them all day long."_

_Fuck. Me._

_I knew I'd said that aloud when Edward chuckled into my cock. _

_I lost all sight, thought, worry, every-fucking-thing, when he __creamed __his beautiful mouth over me and sank like the clouds of heaven onto me!_

_Clawing the bedding so as not to rip apart Edward's hair tickling my thighs and grazing a scratchy silky beat over my pelvis, I growled and cried out. Two long air-tight tugs tore me apart! _

_He liked my cold cum down his throat, likening the texture and flavor to vanilla ice cream._

_Who was I to deny him pleasure? Nourishment?_

_I couldn't wait to have Edward inside of me, thrusting, unbreakable, and unbearably rigid. Not yet. All of my form, inside and out, was so inflexible that I feared for the safety of his cock should he fuck me solid. _

_Soon though, I would know the gratifying sensation of him playing in and out of me._

_I ran my hands through my hair, enticing Edward with my flexing biceps, jutted my hips up so that my cock nudged his nose that was buried in my balls, and lifted him up over me. The swag of his shaft dipped to my tum, beat twice, and then raised back up to its proper perpendicular stature. _

_Fumbling for the lube on the nightstand, I sat up against Edward. Locked his legs around my waist. Tangled one hand in his locks and lipped and sucked his mouth while I reached behind him to make a wet sheath of my dick. _

_So fucking ready for him._

"_Already, baby?" Edward smiled into a kiss that went from soft to harsh in a heartbeat._

_Huskily, I moaned, "Christ, yes."_

"_Well, darlin', your turnaround time is impressive," he simpered, sampling the lobe of my ear._

"_Morningwood," I tapped the column of his cock, "Permawood," I stroked myself up and down, twice._

"_That could become a problem, if not handled properly, Jasper," Edward lifted up with his feet planted flat on the bed at my sides and his arms braced on my thighs. _

_Coming down onto me, he moaned out a heavy thing. _

_I curled one forearm around his waist and held him as he arched backward. _

_Reveling in the feel of that tight hot clasping swath enveloping me._

_The tightest of tight ring of muscles clamped the base of my cock, the hardest of hard soft smooth buttons of tissue teased my head, fully seated inside of him._

_Eroding back out of Edward, my ass met the bed and I pulled him up, almost off of me._

"_FUCK!" Edward shouted._

"_Yes," I growled._

_The soles of my feet twitched and curled into the mattress like into silty sand wearing away beneath Atlantic breakers._

_My cock was the outgoing tide, the incoming surf._

_His sweat both woodsy cedar and stinging seabreeze._

_The air we made, the moans we stole were all steamy, briny, pure and misty and mingled between lover's utterances and mighty tumultuous salty shouts, shoals._

_Pounding like the surf, I plundered in and out of Edward, pushing with such force that he bounced upon my hips and sank back down like a ship's prow to ocean floor. White capped wavelets of my poison began to leak out._

_Between us, above me, Edward's shaft was a Redwood of the Pacific Northwest I had known intimately. Tall, swollen, bright-headed. Streaked like rosy emulsion, his elite erection eclipsed anything I had ever seen. Carved with veins, cut by the shelf of his canopying head, his cock was resplendent!_

_Drops of unguent lifted up and out and tracked down. I gathered those dribbles in my fingers and brought them to my mouth._

_And rhythmically moved until all became clasping gasping frantic currents of hurricanes over the ocean._

_Sound sucked out, my cock was sucked in. Edward's spattered streams of cum up my chest. Silent howls and inert clenched muscles and open mouthed mute screams!_

_I jerked hard and thought I would never stop._

_Edward laughed and grinned and bellowed through my unending orgasm. When I had breath enough, I sniggered into his neck, holding him tight to me. Loving this man. _

_Folding us over into a heap of replete limbs, muscles lax, sleepy as if overtaken by tryptophan, Edward snuffled back into slumber almost immediately while I embraced him in a dreamy trance of my own._

_~~ll~~_

Resplendently reclined on the rough woolen sofa in our rustic red-tin roofed cottage, a fire roasting in the fieldstone fireplace that built its way from scaly blue slate hearth to timbered cathedral ceiling, awaiting his evening meal like the king he was, Edward was replenished after a day's worth of snoozing and a hot shower.

The burning pyramid of driftwood made greenish blue phosphorescent smoke that leapt out of the brazier before it was sucked up the chimney and out into the coldening night.

Padding over the uneven pine floorboards until my feet fell into the coarse old Oriental rug, I smiled at the sight of him.

_My man._

Eyeing, most unwholesomely, my body that was naked but for a pair of racy skimpy boxers, Edward looked to the heirloom tea tray I carried.

Usually it held his evening meal. Oddly turned on by the image of him eating, I had taken to cooking for my mortal lover. Another means of showing my adoration for him.

Tonight the service was all but empty.

In future, Edward would not need human sustenance.

"What's the meaning of this, Jasper," Edward asked the same question he had not eight hours before, this time properly understanding the implications of the sole wineglass and the uncorked bottle of 2006 Lamborn Serendipity Vintage Zinfandel.

I decanted the rich crimson drops into his glass and watched the legs of wine following crystal.

Much like his blood would soon fall into my throat.

He held the upperhand.

Always had, always would.

_Always._

I would give Edward anything. I wanted to take everything.

_Even this._

Placing a wide silver band upon his left ring finger, I bent upon one knee, beholden by his wide smile of acceptance that he could not hide behind the wine he slowly imbibed.

With the glass empty and set aside, Edward licked his lips tainted by tannin and grapes and whispered, "Yes, Jasper."

_My husband, my timeless mate._

_Edward._

* * *

_~Yeah, _sigh~

**Misguided Angel lyrics:**

I said mama, he's crazy and he scares me  
But I want him by my side  
Though he's wild and he's bad  
And sometimes just plain mad  
I need him to keep me satisfied

Misguided angel hangin over me

Heart like a gabriel, pure and white as ivory  
Soul like a lucifer, black and cold like a piece of lead  
Misguided angel, love you til I'm dead

I said brother, you speak to me of passion  
You said never to settle for nothing less  
Well, it's in the way he walks,  
It's in the way he talks  
His smile, his anger and his kisses

I said sister, don't you understand?  
He's all I ever wanted in a man  
I'm tired of sittin around the t.v. every night  
Hoping I'm finding a mr. right

Misguided angel hangin over me  
Heart like a gabriel, pure and white as ivory  
Soul like a lucifer  
Black and cold like a piece of lead  
Misguided angel, love you til Im dead

He says baby, dont listen to what they say  
There comes a time when you have to break away  
He says baby there are things we all cling to all our life  
Its time to let them go and become my wife


	2. Falling

Extra large lovin' to Viola Cornuta (even though she wanted to keep the boys all to herself)!

**Disclaimer: **Do Not Own.

**Quick note: **this chapter takes place before the previous chapter (some events/memories overlap).

~~Here you go! Thanks very much for the fucking amazing reviews for Wooed! Oh, and the visual inspiration for this… VF photoshoot: Rob in a cableknit sweater, with lobster ;). _Oh yeah_~~

**Song**_**: Falling Sun, **_**Anouk **

www . youtube . com/watch?v=3Ny5SpFpfLw&NR=1

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**Falling**

**Edward**

_**Charleston, SC**_

I knew something was amiss with Jasper. It was vivid and clear as a summer day at Folly Beach. The way he talked, with a lilt of timeworn accent and jargon of the past, and his movements entirely too graceful, sometimes way too damn fast, he was more than just different. He was unique and… something _antiquated._

The man never slipped or tripped apart from the one time I'd had to pull him from the onslaught of oncoming traffic, and that just wasn't natural. A hurricane force of sexual attraction had slammed into me when I'd clenched his forearm to halt his fall into the road. And I'd had to give a mighty heave to hoist him back to the curb; as if he weighed more than a frigate at sea. Not completely in keeping with his tall, lithe, rangy body.

_Yeah, something was off._

Within six months of pressing my attentions on him, damn near stalking the man until he accepted my request for a date, I'd moved in with him. Under this close proximity, there was no way in hot-hell I could deny the oddity of his behavior.

Unsleeping but always looking replenished; Jasper's nocturnal waking had nothing to do with insomnia. He was like a possum, but he didn't sleep during the day either. He was fucking cold, _ice cold_, like he'd stood in front of the A/C vent for about four hours.

And _Sweet Momma Brown_, the man could _fuck_. All day _and _all night without rest. Whereas I woke up with morningwood, Jasper walked about with permawood. I had a healthy libido, but his was superlative.

Between the coolness, the elegance, the gorgeous dick that never needed to recover from a fuck, there was one other clue to his otherness; Jasper didn't eat a lick of food. And I knew goddamn well the man wasn't suffering from an eating disorder, he was built like a brick shit house-brawny of shoulder, lean of hip, sliced across his back and chest and abs with fucking welts of muscle. And his thighs, _oh my fucking lord, _his thighs were carved from pure sin… strapping and ropy with sinew.

No, I knew there was nothing wrong with his appetite, I just couldn't figure out how he sated it.

I didn't want to push him overtly, so I did it in a more secretive manner; waiting for him to crack… to confess to whatever it was about him that was… _different_. Mid-afternoon romps were followed by naps during which I dozed lightly in my lover's encircling arms while he grew more and more agitated and restless. Not one bit tired.

I really liked to fuck with Jasper via the eggs. Each morning I slid a bigger plateful across to him, hiding my laughter as I watched his gold eyes pop from his head.

_Gold eyes._

And, yeah, that was another thing. He didn't even wear contacts. Like melted caramel, the crisped crust of crème brulee, his eyes were wide and vibrant and _gold._

I made him black-eyed susans for breakfast. A perfectly wobbly, unbroken globe of yoke nestled in a circle I'd cut into the middle of the toast.

Jasper retched.

He pushed the plate aside with a long groan that turned into a sigh and found him sifting his long powdery fingers through his curls.

I looked down, both wary and curious, understanding this was his breaking point.

When he told me, "I'm a vampire, Edward," I blanched but kept my head lowered, mechanically eating my food, reaching across the table to grab his hand and caress the snowcaps of his straining knuckles.

Knowing something was different about my man, was one thing.

Having him tell me he was a vampire? Unexpected, _unsettling,_ worrying and… _why the hell not?_

In a town filled with old time bad-doings, serial killers' apparitions, an overflowing insane asylum in the1800's, ghosts, phantoms of pirates, lynch gangs and marketplace hangings to jeering mobs… _why not this?_

The most haunted city in the United States. Why not a vampire to add to its morbid appeal?

I bit back an ironic laugh.

I swallowed the resurging fear and wrenching shock, almost gagging just like Jasper had at eyeing the gooey pile of eggs before him.

Instinct told me to run.

But Jasper held onto my hand like a man drowning. When I met his eyes, they were flooded with such hurt, suspicion and indecision, I had to let him know, I _had_ to be braver and stronger than this immortal person sitting in my kitchen, this creature who had shared my bed and snared my heart. I linked our fingers and eased the muscles around my mouth to form a smile, "Really? I'd imagined worse, Jasper," and I winked at him, pushing down the eggs that hovered in my throat, wanting to come back up.

He knew my calmness was a ruse, of course, but it was enough to erase the haunted look from his irises, enough to make me start convincing myself that not only could I believe this, I could accept it.

We went on as if nothing unusual had transpired for the remainder of the day. When we made love, and it was _love_, I marveled at the strength of his flesh I'd never comprehended. When he came inside of me, I nearly fainted for all it meant, his limitless restraint, his most tender touches.

Huddling into his body, the moon and her stars winked at me, a constellation of good fortune. Snuggling deeper to his implacable form, I whispered, "I love you, Jasper."

He jostled against me slightly, "We need to talk, Edward."

Sinking beneath those words, my dreams were a jumbled mess of me and him; humans, beasts, and flesh and flashes of all the things I wondered if I'd ever understand.

In the morning, I pulled myself together. In the mirror, I was as pale as Jasper. I smacked my cheeks a few times to bring back their normal flush, I rubbed my fingers down my stubble, remembering the deep grunts Jasper had released the night before when I'd scratched up and down his stomach with my cheek, rasped my face against his broad cock, and licked his heavy balls into my mouth, one at a time. Gathering my thoughts, glaring at my boundless erection, deciding against a shave… _hiding in the bathroom_, I heard Jasper in the kitchen, I heard eggs cracking and the pop of the toaster, I smelled coffee percolating. And I smiled, because this man-or-monster who I knew I loved, who I knew loved me with every essence of whatever he was, was making me breakfast.

_Fucked up world._

I mouthed to myself in the mirror, "Edward, would you change any of this? Would you have rather not met Jasper?"

My echo, my mirror image shook his disheveled head.

_No fucking way_.

I sat at the table, and Jasper served me, for a change.

The coffee tasted like burnt black liquid shit. The toast was charred to a crisp so the butter made creamy hills amongst the cold flint. The eggs. _Oh the eggs!_ Yes, the yolk was runny, but the whites were too. I thought I heard a mother hen clucking in the distance.

I fucking ate it all and said a prayer against salmonella.

And I thanked Jasper with a kiss over the table and my cleaned plate.

We adjourned to the living room. The floor-to-ceiling windows allowed hazy humid sunshine in, heating me and not touching Jasper's skin. A sprinkle of dust glittered behind him when he sat down, like the fashioning of glowing angel's wings at his back.

_He was no demon._

I put on my glasses, pulled out the notes I'd compiled furiously the afternoon before, and started with a dry throat. Fumbling and stupid, I commenced with the most inane and inappropriate questions born of too many superstitions and bad horror flicks, "How can you go about in daylight, what do you eat, _where's your casket?_"

A deep rumble of laughter undulated out of Jasper, and he splayed his legs wider, his head back, a grin on his face… he looked like he did when we'd just fucked.

He answered every query, but stilled and turned serious with my unending barrage, "How long have you been alive, have you ever killed a human, _why me?_"

Sitting forward, his elbows to his knees and his chin on his steepled fingers, Jasper looked straight at me, his eyes turning from Klondike to steely black and his mouth firm, "I was born in 1843. I was turned in 1863. I'm twenty years old, _younger than you and forever older._ I have not only killed humans but have slaughtered hundreds, I've drunk their blood as the devil I am.

"I haven't touched a civilian in that manner for fifty-six years."

He shook his head, and the feathered motes behind him now subdued by the setting sun settled like delicate and broken wings, "_Why you?_ I don't fucking know, Edward. Why me?"

I blushed and swallowed thick mucus. Gripping the arms of my chair, I sat up and braced myself, "Because, it was inevitable, Jasper." I leaned forward and our knees touched, our hands dangling inches apart, "I don't really care what you are. You," I grabbed his cleft chin in my palm and made him look at me, "are my lover. My man. You, Jasper Whitlock, are my fucking love."

And he was. The hairs at the nape of my neck had sat down. My cock had jerked up.

I remembered him, that first instance.

_A fuckin' tourist trying to filch my ride. Assholes needed to stick to bicycles and carriage rides. This was my city, and I had places to be._

_A boy no less._

_I knocked him sideways and grabbed the taxi door handle, but then saw the awe on his face, heard the blare of a horn as a half-ton Chevy barreled towards him on the narrow cobbled byway. _

_Yanking him up, I lowered myself enough to share the ride._

_And then I looked at him more closely. In the enclosed space, like a heated smoky envelope, there was a current running between us. My polar opposite, he was slightly shorter, a bit rougher hewn, heavily muscled through his chest and shoulders. His hair was wild as mine but longer, wavy and blond. There was no blight, blemish or stubble on his face, and his cheeks were high with deep dimples when he smiled shyly at me with the plumpest pink lips._

_That glorious sensual smile was the end of me, the start of us._

_I certainly would have remembered him. Fuck's sure I hadn't seen him at The Pantheon, not that the cram-packed club was my scene, but, when needs must, sometimes anything would do in a pinch._

_This man here was not a pinch hitter._

_Not by a long shot._

_The cabbie dropped him off first, I memorized his address. A wealthy street in the French Quarter just over from historic, iron balustrades of the Dock Street Theater. There were giant magnolias in his scant front square spilling huge glossy white flowers and a lemon-tangy fragrance._

_Petals dropped down in the midday sun, lazily floating as if caught in the arms of the day's dense mugginess._

_I went back to his house. I cajoled and teased and tested him. I put on my best smiles and smirks and grins, my most appealing clothes and plied him with compliments and little found gifts like a posy of wild roses, a tome I'd gotten for one dollar at Pope's Antiques on King Street._

_He'd tried, gently, to put me off. Blinded, I wouldn't be swayed. If I'd known the truth then, would I have run?_

Now, I didn't know.

Then I'd just seen Jasper as a mysterious young man who was obtuse and singular and withheld. Somehow both strong and shy. I fell in love with his spirit as much as his grace and saturnine stature.

Now I understood it all. A century and half old, and then some, he'd shunned companionship for so fucking long.

_Now_ it all made perfect sense. And I believed I could take him, have him, as mine, as vampire and a man.

And now that the truth was out, we wrestled with who he was and what I'd thought he'd been.

In his time, an astute follower of economical trends, Jasper had amassed wealth that kept rolling over. Never had he flaunted his good fortune, because it wasn't that at all really. At least not to him. He was neither lucky nor blessed, he claimed.

Instead he was cursed and blighted.

He looked so… _tired_ when he talked about time. The way it never stopped, the manner in which he never aged, the fact he never slept was exhausting. Boredom and repetition and loneliness was mind-numbing for one destined to walk the earth unattached to the human beings who surrounded him.

Shaking off my comforting hand to his slouched shoulder, he grinned and explained what he did with his days, with the bulk of his money. In giving himself and his greenbacks to as many charities as he could support, he repented for the horrific blood spilling and violently brutal murders he'd committed under the thumb of Maria, his dam.

"It's not divine retribution, but it'll do," he said with a half-sad smile.

He never once promised it wouldn't happen again. He never claimed to be rehabilitated beyond reproach. In that manner, Jasper was human as the rest of us.

He understood his boundaries, his imperfections, the instincts bred into his empty veins and frosty fortified bones. Like Fort Moultrie he'd made a fifty-year stand against all of his cruel impulses, but, _he thought,_ the fortress he shielded himself with could crumble with just one scent.

But for now, contact was what he craved, more than the blood of people. Simple human kindness, and to give back. In his charity work, he could have easily written a check, become a benefactor of one charity or another (and he did do that), but he walked among the populace a living man, and worked at Crisis Ministries, the Lowcountry Food Bank, Habitat for Humanity… to see, meet, talk and know _people._

Courageously, he inured himself to the fragrance of human fodder, occasionally even making a friend, and finally opening up to me.

_How the hell could I ever doubt him?_ This gilded angel, this devil-cherub? This Phoenix who had reformed himself?

The more Jasper told me, the more desperately I wanted to soothe him and hold him and make love to him. Knowing what he was didn't turn me off; it turned me on like no other. And the more he divulged—even though he spoke with sincere honesty of his past—it felt like he was closing himself off from the future… _from a future with me._

And that worried the shit out of me.

Just a couple weeks after he'd told me of his vampire nature, with the air between us becoming increasingly more suffocating and stilted, Jasper proposed an evening walk. In full brooding mode, the handsome lines of his face were etched in tenseness, the jut of his juicy bottom lip was more pronounced, the swagger of his walk became a tough stride as we wandered to the Battery and its White Point Gardens. The sea boomed against the stronghold, keeping the shore away from the millionaires' antebellum mansions.

Ornery, obviously pissed off, Jasper broke from my grasp and stormed ahead.

_He wouldn't let me touch him… hell, he wouldn't even let me hold his hand._

Fear washed over me, that certain knowledge that the thing you never fucking _ever_ want to happen—the nightmare that has you waking up in a cold sweat with a scream lodged inside your throat—was just about to come to pass.

Catching up with him in the gazebo, Indian summer mosquitoes buzzing about me, I heard his dirty self-denying laugh and hated it, hated _him_, "I think you need some time to yourself, Edward. To process all this," Jasper swung his arm out to the Atlantic as if his spirit resided there, instead of in my heart.

My temper flared, "Fuck! You really think I never guessed something was unusual about you, Jasper? You think I stayed with you to have you fob me off at the very first difficulty?" I spat saliva to the white boards at our feet, I was so fucking furious with him. I'd tamed my fright, eaten my dismay, killed my horror because I loved him. And he was going to walk away… _send me away._ My lips formed a hard sneer. _I don't fucking think so._

"This isn't a _difficulty_, Edward." He looked me straight in the eye and his were already slated over, "This is me, being a _goddamn vampire_ in love with a human man!"

Always the hunter in this relationship, I stalked to him. "I've already processed _this._"

I grabbed his neck and pulled him to my mouth, grinding out, "Don't you fucking pussyfoot around with me, Jasper. If you want to leave then you tell me straight out."

Desperate, unhinged levity rose and Jasper laughed as he unleashed my tenuous hold with absolutely no exertion, "There's nothing _pussy_ about me, as you well know," he declared as he set me apart.

"Yeah, you got that right," I agreed, my voice lowering, my eyes dipping down his body. "You're all man, aren't you, babe? _My Man,_" I emphasized with two steps in his direction.

Jasper rallied, "Don't toy with me, Edward. You're being fucking naïve, and you know it!"

He turned his back and made as if to vault over the rail, but I called him with my hands squeezing his chest, my face to his spine, "I. Don't. Care. Jasper, I don't fucking care."

I sank my hips to his ass and ran my clothed cock up the seam of his pants.

His head lolled forward and his arms bent, his knees gave way, and he turned to me with a honey smile, "Are you just trying to get a rise out of me?"

With his huge sundown eyes pure with innocence, trust and lust, his wide mouth fighting a smile, Jasper waited my pronouncement.

I spread his thighs with mine and ground my shaft to his, "Looks like I already did, baby."

I placed my tongue to the cleft of his chin, lapping it.

Jasper pulled me to him by my ears that were flushed red with want, kissing me with his firm full lips, plush and pouty under mine. My mouth was crisp and firm; his pink, mine deep like wine, as if I were the vampire in this relationship.

Our breaths caught, our jeans snagged and he pushed me away, "You don't know what you're asking for, Edward."

The steam of our lagged breaths fumed to the autumn air, a group of girls giggled and lingered on the steps on the pavilion.

My forehead to his, rubbing his mouth with my fingertips, _I'd never let him go_, "Then show me, Jasper."

Full of shame, reliving, _I knew_, his rampant past, Jasper steadied himself and shunned me, "I'm so in love with you. This has been a gift, Edward. _You are a blessing._ But I've stolen too much of you already. I want you to be free. And it's fucking killing me to say this," his longing eyes were craving the liquid of tears as they foundered to mind, "but you have a choice to make. I don't deserve your love. I've done nothing to warrant your devotion."

I pounded his chest, only serving to bruise my fists, shaking my head in denial of whatever he might say next.

Fisticuffs to my wrists, he stopped my battering and exhaled his spellbinding air over me, "You don't know what I am. You've accepted the word, you think you understand, but you haven't _seen me._"

I struggled and raged, my jaw clenched, and my green eyes were pitchforks of fury, "Then you show me, Jasper. _You man up and show me!_ Because I'm not fucking leaving you."

His eyes softened, melted. His fingers relented, stroked. His arms tugged and hugged me, "Okay, Edward. Okay. We'll go away together. Then you'll know."

_**Asheville, NC**_

Our cabin was secluded. Way the fuck off the beaten path. Up near the treeline on a craggy mountain fifteen minutes from downtown Asheville and a long, twisty, snakeback precarious drive in first gear. It was cold as Jasper's cock up this high, so I made good use of the cast iron fireplace that sat kitty corner in the main room, melting the skittery frost from the enormous window panes in the cathedral ceilinged space.

I wanted to stay with Jasper… _I'd do anything to be with him._ Limited with my human power, the one thing I could give him was complete acceptance in whatever form he took. Apprehension drifted over me—_I just didn't have the slightest idea what he was planning on showing me, up here._

Blanketed in white, and peace, and quiet, I willfully shut down my over-reaching mind.

I slid open the door, walked around the rustic wrap porch and sat down in one of the tomato red Adirondack chairs, folding a soft woolen throw around my legs.

The light up here was close to God. Luminous, rarified, unbreathed, untouched. Trees scattered down the near-sheer mountain face, stumbling amongst rocks and ragged outcroppings. Not a sound heard, not a person seen.

Into my bucolic reverie, a vision I could never have fathomed just a few weeks ago gracefully loped toward me. I sat up straighter, and the unsettled feeling in my body scratched like the itchy braids of my cable knit sweater.

The charming sly smile on his face jarred with the fact Jasper was alternately leaping and running from giant stone to stone, sending small landsides crashing down the cliff… _with a struggling 7-point buck laid across his wide shoulders_. Even more disquieting, each foot speedily placed _cracked_ into the cotton-hush of the air.

Even more alarming, the buck was still alive.

Stopping about ten yards away, Jasper heaved the mewling animal with little more than a flex of his arms to a flat-topped boulder with an almighty _THWACK!_ The tortured braying stopped, but its eyes still registered with life. He was merely stunned into silence; perhaps Jasper had severed his spine.

Sinisterly, Jasper heard my shocked gasp and smirked at me, his eyes black as purgatory, "Hungry, honey?"

I'm sure I paled, I tried not to cringe. I licked my lips and swallowed though my mouth was dry as if I had a pounding hangover. Understanding, _finally_, this was no fucking joke, vampires _were real,_ my lover was one and he consumed blood, my booted feet hit the timbers of the porch heavily, and I pitched forward, trying not to heave up the apple I'd just eaten. With a whisper-he could hear every mutter and mumble of mine I know knew-I begged, "Please, Jasper, put him out of his misery."

Baring his throat, toned and stretched with muscle, Jasper laughed, "Can't, honey. I like my blood fresh, still pumping. I'll be gentle though." Lethal, his voice was velvety with murderous intent.

I knew he was showing me this for a reason, testing my mettle and resolve.

Holding the buck extended and ready, his hands were manacles, those gentle gifts that had been all over my body in the most loving, most sexy way. His teeth when he grinned at me and then smiled tenderly at the deer glinted like razors and were weapons. Teeth I'd touched with my tongue and that had nibbled my nipples, my ribs, run up and down my cock were now slicing through a ribbon of flesh with a sucking, tissue-separating squelch.

It wasn't as grisly as I'd feared. Hypnotized by Jasper leaning over the stag like I'd felt him pressing into me, _like a lover_, he stroked the bristly hide and nuzzled the opened artery, slurps and moans and quiet sucking interspersed. Unnerved, intrigued and enthralled, I couldn't tear my eyes away. My own heart pounded up so my blood flooded my ears. As he neared the end of his long drink, Jasper used one hand to snap the beast's neck with a _CRACK_ that echoed down the mountainside, putting an end to its life.

It wasn't repugnant. Jasper's eating from this animal was beautifully macabre, a twisted tantalizing tableau.

Just as I did when I finished a meal, Jasper wiped his mouth on his shirtsleeve and sat back on his haunches. There was no glee or wickedness anymore, only fear when he looked up to me. I'd already started down the steps, one foot on the forest floor, one hand extended to him.

"Do I scare you?"

"Not exactly," but I wasn't smirking. I acknowledged the gravity of his life and what it impelled him to do. As I walked on sluggish feet to Jasper, he shook his head and jumped away, turned his back. I didn't want to pursue this predator so I stilled. "There's always been a darkness in you I now understand. I think your lightness outshines it, but without the frightening magic inside of you, there'd be no such dawn." I stood tall and squared my shoulders, "No, I'm not scared of you, baby."

Jasper turned and spat, "How can you call me _baby_ after that?" He swept his arm out to the dead steaming carcass beside him. "You know what, Edward. I think you should be scared as fuck! Maybe if you saw me murder a human?"

"Jasper! _NO!_ I know you've killed in the past, that it's taken decades and a strength of will I'll never be able to match to get beyond that. So, how can you deny the power of your spirit? How can you stand there and fucking tell my I should run from you? You may be a vampire, you may have consumed innocents, something I'll never understand, but you've come out as a man. _We're all fallible."_

He tugged at his curls, glared at the buck-corpse, looked at me and away. His slumped shoulders rose slowly, his hands fell away eventually, his eyes lifted, fossilized amber again.

I stood my ground as he came to me, bearing proud again. _My man, my vampire, my everything._ He smelled musky and like iron. His hands cradled my face, and I pushed against him. He put his lips, big and cushiony, against my ear so I could clearly hear the smirk in his voice, "I know what you're thinking, honey. Don't worry, I'll brush my teeth before I kiss you."

I laughed so hard, with such relief, tears were running down my face as I staggered back to the cabin. _He wasn't wrong._

Jasper remained at the slab-rock, claiming he needed to take care of the animal so as not to attract bears. Ahead of me as I climbed the stairs, a brown paper parcel landed on the porch. Jasper had lobbed the package up and was grinning like a fucking in-love fool when I looked behind to him.

He raised one eyebrow and silently ushered me forward.

Inside? Two live lobsters trying to scale the crackling package; scrabbling, claws clacking.

Disbelief riddled me, "Where the hell did you get these?" I shouted across the woods, forgetting I didn't need to raise my voice in my surprise.

Winking, Jasper hefted the dead weight back to his shoulders, "Just took a run to the coast, honey. You're gonna' get hungry sometime, and I can't wait to watch you with melted butter rimming your lips."

_Oh, fuck me._

An hour later, I'd taken the ax out of the chopblock and split a few armloads of wood, I'd warmed up fireside and made a cup of cocoa to bring with me to the deck.

I heard the whoosh of the sliding door and turned in my chair. My hair was rumpled, I'd changed into a red and black checkered flannel shirt and clean jeans and pulled my chair up to the outdoor heater on the splintery timbered porch.

Raising my eyes from my book, all the air left my body in a huge rush. _Fuck me now._

Fresh from a shower, Jasper's smell combined subtly with the loamy cedar fragrance of the forest; he made me dizzier than the spin-drop of the overhang we perched atop.

Towel drying damp burnished locks, his jeans practically dripping off his lean hips, boot flaps open and unlaced, shirtless – _Jesus H. Christ! -_ he gave me vertigo.

Him and his fucking lazy smile…how could he look so human and be so goddamn masculine, and still hold the supreme gift of the ethereal locked in his body?

It was my turn to play, I fucking deserved it, I'd worked for this. I leaned easily and pulled my harmonica from my back pocket, ensuring my grassy eyes were languid, weighty with all the wantonness that pounded through me. Low and rough, I spoke, "You know, baby, I love my harmonica, the way it feels to _blow_ and _suck_, making the metal slick with my saliva and running it up and down my lips. Ain't nothin' better, _almost._"

His toweling-off stopped, he threw the terry cloth to the glass door with a wet smack. His fists clenched. And his shirtless chest began to rise and fall with quick breaths.

Fueled like the blaze inside by his erotic reaction, I continued, even lower and more gravelly of tone, "But I love another _organ_ in my _mouth_ even more."

I pulled the instrument to my lips and let loose with the slow sexy tune, _Heart of Gold_, the metal whispering across the stubble atop my lip where I hadn't shaved in days.

Between refrains, I sang:

_I want to live,  
I want to give  
I've been a miner  
for a heart of gold.  
It's these expressions  
I never give  
That keep me searching  
for a heart of gold  
And I'm getting old._

_I've been to Hollywood  
I've been to Redwood  
I crossed the ocean  
for a heart of gold  
I've been in my mind,  
it's such a fine line  
That keeps me searching  
for a heart of gold._

Striding to me, Jasper didn't let me finish the song. Sitting astride me, he pulled the harmonica from my lips and replaced it with his mouth, a gut-deep growl thrumming inside his chest. I ripped my hands into his hair and ground up against him, my hands rippled over his hard-as-ice pecs, pinching nipples, knuckling his belly button, and I yanked open both our top buttons so our pubic hair rasped and tangled together. I groaned into Jasper's lips, he suckled and licked my tongue. He grabbed my ass and pulled me off the seat of the chair and straight up to his erection, "_FUCK_, Edward."

We were panting and starving and so fucking needy. I pushed my fingers into the opened flap of his jeans, but before I could reach his dick, Jasper pulled my hand up and held it above my head. Replacing our lush deep plundering kiss with little bites, he anchored me, "You need to eat, honey."

"Shit."

Lifting himself off me, Jasper jokingly berated, "Now, now, Edward, that's no way to speak to your elder."

I threw my book at his fucking gorgeous tight retreating ass. How the hell could he just walk away from _that kiss_? Oh yeah, without doubt, the man had paranormal abilities.

He returned with a huge tray piled with bright red lobster, a bowl of clarified butter, and a frosty mug of beer. Pulling up a chair, Jasper placed the platter next to him on the seat.

_This was gonna' be good._

Trying to wipe the smile from his mouth, Jasper took up a lobster, rolled off the mint-green rubber band as if he were rolling a condom onto his cock, and smoldered out, "I like to eat al fresco, Edward."

"Yeah, I'd noticed that, baby. And I like to fuck _al fresco_, so I guess that makes us even." It was my turn to watch Jasper gulp furiously.

"Crackers?" I asked.

He cracked his knuckles.

"Bib?"

He bit his lip and then ran his tongue down my throat, "I'd be happy to clean up any mess, honey."

True to his word, Jasper tore open a claw and pulled the red-speckled flesh out, keeping it intact.

Opening my mouth, I felt first the drizzle of warm butter running over my lips and then the plop of meaty sweet flesh to my tongue. Chewing, savoring, closing my eyes and moaning at the rich taste, all I could think of was Jasper's cock in my mouth and the honey drench of his cum all down my throat.

His fingers were greasy, as if he'd dipped them into a well of warm cum. Rubbing them over my lips, he compelled me to open again for another juicy fat morsel, and this time when I groaned and frowned at the delicious flavor, Jasper held his palm to my throat, feeling me swallow like he did sometimes when I took his length deep into my throat.

At the tail, when I'd sucked the sinewy little strings of tissue from each leg joint, I shoved his hands aside, "Allow me."

Smiling indolently, I pushed two fingers into the shell, working the rubbery creamy muscle from top to bottom. I winked at Jasper as I took hold of the opening ends of lobster and pulled out the best bit in one piece. Dipping it into the mug of butter, I slowly lowered it to my mouth and ate it, one section at time.

"Jesus fuck, Edward," Jasper exhaled. I licked my fingers and then placed them into his mouth.

There was more I needed to say. While he was distracted, I found the courage, "I admire you."

Jasper sat back and braided his fingers through mine so they stuck together.

"I love and respect you."

He shook his head and looked aside.

I took his chin in hand and watched his eyes glimmer through sunset to midnight, "You _do_ scare me."

Wide and just like a boy, his brow furrowed and his lips pouted, and he could have broken away.

"_I'm fucking petrified you'll leave me, Jasper."_

With a crash, the remaining lobster, the platter, the stein fell to the planks, and I was in his arms, his hands like metal bands around my back, "Even though I'm technically dead, Edward, _I've never felt this alive._"

"I know, baby, me too. And I can't fucking wait any longer. So, now that you've so thoroughly_… fed me_," I bit down on my bottom lip, "I want to thoroughly _fuck you_."

I stood and scooted the wooden chair back. Chuckling when his eyes grew huge and then tight with lust, I disrobed. Pushing off the cover of the Jacuzzi, I beckoned Jasper, lowering myself to the bubbling water as filigreed snowflakes began to fall.

Shucking out of his boots and jeans, Jasper hesitantly joined me. Clouds of steam billowed, a sizzle and pop sounded from his skin meeting the heated water, and he fell back into the convex seat, "Oh my god, this is heavenly. We're getting a fucking hot tub."

My feet rasped against his thighs and then stole to his crotch where the gorgeous shape of him was ridged and warmed.

"_Oh fuck, honey!_" Jasper's head met the surround. His voluptuous voice enveloped me with want.

I stood, dripping heat, beginning to shiver with cold, "Come."

Hand in hand we ran like kids through the sparkling black night indoors. Falling to the looped rug in front of the roaring fire, damp and longing, I brought his lips to mine, and all laughing ceased.

_Please just save me from this darkness._

It was as if he spoke. But he hadn't.

Jasper was inside my life.

Between his legs that I stroked open, I sank. Four days of bearded growth rubbed his thighs, up and down until he jumped and belted beneath me. My chapped lips pursed, and I pulled his erection in, and it was more luxurious than anything I'd ever tasted.

He knotted his hands into my moist hair and wrenched me away. His cock was saturated with venom and a deep purple color, beating pulsing veins wrapped it like satin ribbons, the most sensual present.

I wanted him in me.

The shadow-light of the fire was hot and hellish and heavenly.

Sweat on my back ran into the cooled drops from the Jacuzzi. I shivered with passion, _never fear._

Jasper took me, turned me to my stomach.

My shaft was down between my legs, hard and straight and sitting straight out from my balls. He spread me wide and reached up to tip of my cock, a tincture of cum crawled onto his fingers as he handled my full-to-bursting head. Using it as ointment, Jasper ran two straight long fingers around my plush peach balls, rolling them and then strolling up to my ass.

I lifted to my elbows, my forehead met the rug, my bottom reared up. "_Oh fuck! Please. Please, please."_

Over my shoulder, I watched Jasper roll a condom over his thick dappled cock, plying lube to his muscle and my bum.

"Now, _Jasper baby, Now!_"

I sank to the floor as he sank into me. Pulling up my hips, he opened my ass and gave it to me. Long slow sure lunges that made me bite my lips until blood was drawn, and I knocked my clinched fists to the rug helplessly.

Like the butter before, Jasper strolled his hand over the sweat gathering in the base of my back, making a slick hot work of me.

Then he held my hips, tilted to a new angle, thrust twice mightily so my face and chest were plastered to the floorboards.

_Oh fuck. Jesus FUCK fuck fuck FUCK YES!_

Bowed over me, Jasper gasped with me, his chest massaging up and down my back with every plunge he took.

_He didn't need to breathe._

I smiled, my face smashed to wood.

Reaching up, behind, I was rewarded with a kiss to my shoulder, spun around, lifted up, taken to bed.

_I love you._

I was exhausted. From the love, from the worry, the threatand collision of supernatural terror with humane awe. I knew it now.

Sleepily ingesting all the day had brought me, I understood it _now_. It wasn't glamorous. Jasper really was a beast inside of a man's body, and his battle was very fucking real.

Dreams waited.

Sleep denied me.

I wanted to be with Jasper forever. Even if it meant my death and rebirth as a vampire. The price of mortality was too dear.

I did understand Jasper, _finally_.

And all I knew was love, _thoroughly_.

I put my lips to his throat while he held me into sleep, mumbling quietly, "I want to be with you, Jasper. Not just for this life, while I age and you remain unchanged. I want to be with you, Jasper, _for the rest of our life._"

I had my heart of gold.

* * *

_~Fin~_

~And now, let us all give thanks for these gorgeous men ;)~

_Heart of Gold _is by Neil Young (I was torn about the songs, but _Falling Sun_ seemed perfect for these two as an anthem, cheers to my song muse).

There's a tiny bit from _You're All I Have_, by Snow Patrol in there: _There is a darkness deep in you, a frightening magic I cling to._ Also, their _Make This Go On Forever. _ "Please just save me from this darkness."

Oh, and there's a lovely banner for this on my profile :).


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